With all the changes in the major search engines recently,
you may be asking yourself - can I still get good position
rankings? Does it matter?

The answer is YES and MAYBE.

Yes, you can still get good position listings, but it will
be much more challenging then in the past. The search engines
are trying harder to increase revenues and stay ahead of
"search engine positioning" techniques.

It's still possible to get good positions, but you have to
work harder than ever to get them. I'm now recommending site
owners to either hire a part-time marketer, or dedicate
a good part of each week to marketing your site. Here is
what I recommend doing now:

Get tools to optimize your pages. No matter how hard
you try, you can't position without software tools.
On the top of our list is:
WebPosition Goldhttp://www.trimak.com/webposition.cfm

Get the right information. We subscribe to newsletters
and research over a dozen sources every month to determine
what search engines are up to. Here is our favorite:

Planet Ocean Communications
Reports monthly on specifically what works on the search
engines. Also offers one of the best books on succeeding
with search engines. Planet Ocean

Research and Test! Spend time researching the top pages
on each engine and analyze them. Create similar pages
(compare keyword density), submit them and track the
results. If one doesn't work, tweak the pages, and
submit again. This process is always changing, so you
must research and test!

Do high search engine positions matter?

Maybe. If your business generates a lot of traffic from
searches, then yes, top positions will increase your visits.
But it's not the only way to generate traffic. Don't rely
completely on search engine traffic. It will drive you
crazy! Search engines will always change the way they
rank pages to stay ahead of us and their competitors.

The important thing to remember is that you can't rely
on one method to get site traffic. We don't control how
search engines rank our pages, we only react when our
positions change. Spread your promotion out and live a
little more peacefully.